Ars has been going downhill for sometime now. I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising. I'm not saying Ars is fully there yet, but the pull is strong.

The comments section on Ars is particularly depressing. I've been posting there for two decades and watched it slowly devolve from a place where thoughtful discussions happened to now just being one of the worst echo chambers on the internet, like a bad subreddit. I've made suggestions over the years in their public feedback surveys to alter their forum software to discourage mob behavior, but they don't seem to be doing anything about it.

They don't actually publish the comments under the article, only a link. I've long suspected sites doing that are fully aware of how shit the comment section is, and try to hide it from casual viewers while keeping the nutjob gallery happy.

Phoronix comes to mind.

This goes back a lot farther with Ars. They done this for years because their comments section is driven by forum software. The main conversations happen in the forums. They are then reformatted for a the comment view.

So, their main goal wasn’t to hide the comments, but push people to forums where there is a better format for conversation.

At least that’s how it used to work.

The Ars forums used to be incredibly useful sources of information - many of their best authors "grew" from forum posters; and the comments sections on articles were quite informative and had serious comments from actual experts - and discussion!

Then the Soap Box took over the entire site and all that's left is standard Internet garbage.

Most mainstream news sites around here have by now hidden the comment section somehow, either making it folded by default or just moving it to the bottom of the page below "related news" sections and the like.

Hard agree. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/06/meta-debuts-playstati... is an example I remember. The subject matter of the is not controversial (just another Game Pass like subscription), but the comment section is full of -- yes you've guessed it -- Meta BAD! There is absolutely no meaningful discussion of the service itself.

I mostly stopped paying attention to the comment section after that, and Ars in general.

You see the same sort of thing around here with people complaining about the death of Google Reader on anything that even vaguely mentions Google.

I don't see that.

HN has also been taking a turn lately. Part of it is a large influx of new users, part of it (I suspect) is just a growing disenfranchisement with the technology scene. I'm partly to blame for this as well. I've tried to stop commenting most of the time since my first and strongest response has just been to express my anger and frustration at the direction most technology is taking.

If you have a computer, a static IP address, basic programming ability, and an eye for quality, you have the power to make things better.

You know what else I don't see? Google Reader, because Google killed it!

Philosophically I want to agree with you more but Meta is the informational equivalent of RJ Reynolds. They’ve facilitated crime waves (remember all of the hand-wringing about shoplifting which died down when the government went after Facebook marketplace and Amazon?), supported genocide, and elevated some of the worst voices in the world. Giving them more money and social control is a risk which should be discussed.

You're doing it too. Please don't.

I realize it makes you uncomfortable but the harms are done whether or not you ignore them. That’s the problem: people can exploit that desire to be fair, “neutral”, say it’s “just business”, etc. for years until the negative impacts on society are too hard to ignore. Think about how the fossil fuel industry managed to get people to talk like there was a debate with two sides deserving equal respect and parlay that into half a century of inaction after the scientific consensus correctly recognized that there was a real harm being done. We’re going to look back at the attention economy similarly.

> I realize it makes you uncomfortable

I think you're misunderstanding or misrepresenting them. The fight to have the most jaded or pessimistic take, the hottest flame, the spiciest rant, it's all so predictable and it's just a bunch of the same people saying the same things and agreeing with each other for the nth time. It brings nothing new to the table, and the posts that actually respond to the new information get drowned out or worse downvoted for insufficient vitriol.

Perhaps–it’s hard to tell from a single sentence–but I would recommend reading more than the first comment of that thread. The person at the top exaggerated how much it’s not talking about the service or competing options, and the people talking about Facebook are raising what is a reasonable point about privacy and data mining.

Evil deserves to be called out as evil. Why should we constrain the discussion to anything else about them? The absolute best thing they can do for the world would be to disappear, as soon as possible.

The switch to their newest forum software seems to discourage any kind of actual conversation. If I recall correctly, the last iteration was also unthreaded, but somehow it was easier for a back-and-forth to develop. Now it is basically just reactions-- like YouTube comments (which, ironically, is actually threaded).

Is HN really the last remaining forum for science and technology conversations? If so... very depressing.

lobste.rs is smaller but can have good discussion.

Thanks for the tip. Sadly it appears that lobste.rs is invite only?

Yeah, I haven't tried to get an invite, but I enjoy lurking there. Seems like a cool system.

I can say that to a certain degree about Hacker News too.

Still often good comments here, but certain topics devolve into a bad subreddit quickly. The ethos of the rules hasn't scaled with the site.

They should get rid of the fairly extremely prominent badges of years-on-the-forum and number-of-comments. Maybe that'd help quell some of the echo down, because every comment section on Ars articles is 10+ year old accounts all arguing with each other.

I can only conclude it’s what they want at this point

It is certainly how they moderate.

Try reading Slashdot these days and it's the same story. I stopped reading regularly when cmdrtaco left but still check in occasionally out of misplaced nostalgia or something.. The comment section is like a time capsule from the 00s, the same ideas and arguments have been echoing back and forth there for years, seemingly losing soul and nuance with each echo. Bizarre, and sad.

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, you insensitive clod.

Netcraft reports the newsletter is dead, and covered in hot grits.

Yea but doing that would decrease engagement and engagement is the only metric that matters! /s

Yeah it's like a rogues' gallery of terminally online midwits over there

The bigger story is the way tech companies sucked the oxygen out of journalism. This started with capturing a growing chunk of ad revenue but then became editorial control as everyone started picking headlines, writing styles, and publication schedules to please the tech companies which control whether they receive 80% of their traffic.

Everyone writes like Buzzfeed now because Twitter and Facebook made that the most profitable; Google/Twitter/Facebook need a constant stream of new links and incentivize publishing rapidly rather than in-depth; and Facebook severely damaged many outfits with the fraudulent pivot to video pretending they’d start paying more.

Many of the problems we see societally stem back to people not paying for media, leaving the information space dominated by the interest of advertisers and a few wealthy people who will pay to promote their viewpoints.

> sucked the oxygen out of journalism.

They helped monopolize the industry. Willingly destroying the utility of RSS for end users is a prime example.

> Google/Twitter/Facebook need a constant stream of new links

Yet people can't understand that "AI" is just a tool to rip off copyright. For almost _precisely_ this reason here.

> we see societally stem back to people not paying for media

The problem is there is not infinite bandwidth for media. If a free option exists people will gravitate towards it. The real problem is that media sales people and media editors are allowed to be in the same room. We used to understand the value of a "firewall" in this context.

It has nothing to do with the people. It has everything to do with those holding the profit motive. They'll willingly destroy useful things in order to tilt the field in their direction. Social problems rarely have a distributed social cause.

Like the good old days when the media was basically complicit in support of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction?

It seems to me that the news has always kind of been mass bullshit. What has changed is we democratized the production of mass bullshit.

Now everyone can make their own version of "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!"

Not to mention, podcasts go deeper on subjects than any investigative journalist ever really could given the format.

Like the good old days where most markets had multiple papers which had to keep readers subscribing, when broadcasters had to follow the Fairness Doctrine and had a push to more moderation because they couldn’t pick and choose their audience.

It was by no means perfect but I think it was better than now where people getting the illusion of information with little accountability for selection or accuracy.

As to the Iraq war, I will note that the media had extensive debates at the time. Ask anyone who was there and outside of a handful of hard-right outlets, the reporting noted that all of the justifications were unverifiable and coming from the same two governments, and plenty of people questioned that. Again, it wasn’t perfect but I think the answer to “the NYT should’ve fired Judith Miller sooner” is that the NYT should have more rather than less competition.

> I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising

Maybe this is exactly the issue? Every news company is driven like a for-profit business that has to grow and has to make the owners more money, maybe this is just fundamentally incompatible with actual good journalism and news?

Feels like there are more and more things that have been run in the typical capitalistic fashion, yet the results always get worse the more they lean into it, not just news but seems widespread in life.

> Race to the bottom?

There is no bottom. It's turds all the way down!